Enigma
Please note that this is the Enigma Wiki's article on the series, if you are looking for the article on the skull and alias then you should head to ǝnígmǝ, if you are looking for the article on the chapter then you should head to Enigma (chapter). ǝnígmǝ 【エニグマ, commonly referred to as Enigma or Enigme, is a Japanese manga written and illustrated by Kenji Sakaki that appeared in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine from September 2010 to October 2011, with the final chapter published on the sister Jump NEXT! magazine in December 2011. ǝnígmǝ follows the adventures of Sumio Haiba, a student at Yūyami High School with an uncanny Talent called Dream Diary that allows him to predict future events around his life. The early parts of the story focus on Sumio and fellow selected students trapped inside a replica of Yūyami High created by ǝnígmǝ to enact the fifth e-test, an aptitude examination of participants and their special Talents. Plot See also: Manga The story opens with Sumio Haiba to the rescue again with his Dream Diary Talent, this time saving a girl from harassment at Yūyami High. On his way home from school that day, he notices ǝnígmǝ for the very first time on a television screen on the street. That night, his mother Mina realizes this and rushes off to work. Sumio predicts her being captured by ǝnígmǝ, but ends up being too late to save her. The next morning, he is admitted to Yūyami Hospital for behavioral issues, where he makes a promise the next morning to get his mother back and going to sleep, Sumio winds up trapped inside Yūyami High with six other Yūyami High students, including childhood friend and classmate Shigeru Kurumiya. It is at this point that ǝnígmǝ formally reveals itself, whom introduces the seven to a mandatory aptitude examination on their true natures known as an e-test, the fifth of its kind. The e-test rewards participants with their deepest desires as determined by ǝnígmǝ should they finish. Should they not, they shall remain trapped inside ǝnígmǝ's world as a Shadow forever. For the next 72 hours, the seven are trapped inside the school and must find their way out by undergoing a series of challenges to find seven passwords around the school for each to use on a locked "Exit" door. However, there are Shadows roaming around the hallways, ready to kidnap and take control of any stranded, careless participants. Midway through the e-test, they encounter Ryō Kurisu, a past student of Yūyami High and a failed participant of a past e-test seeking to escape alone from the participants. He eventually resolves to help them as he realizes that his old friend and fellow past e-test participant, Jirō Matsurigi, came back to save him. With the eight participants united, they make their way through the remaining challenges. Through completing them, the participants realize they are actually in a replica of Yūyami High School in another dimension, and that all the passwords are related to Queen Airlines Flight 510, a plane tragedy over two years ago. Upon entering their seventh and final challenge, they encounter past e-test participants, now fully transformed into Shadows and out to capture them. Everyone is caught by the Shadows and isolated in a monitor room of the school, except Sumio. Instead, he encounters Yūyami High teacher Yūta Kijima, allegedly the true identity of ǝnígmǝ with the same hand pattern as ǝnígmǝ on his right hand. Kijima burns his Dream Diary and subjects Sumio to a game of tag to acquire the last password. Using his Talent to manipulate the school around him, Kijima wards Sumio away with the intent of murdering him. It is then revealed that Sumio's true Talent is not his Dream Diary, but rather, the Dream Diary is a combination of Shigeru's newly realized Foresight Talent and Sumio's newly correctly recalled telepathic Talent, Telepath. Realizing their true Talents, Sumio and Shigeru work together to figure out Kijima's base of operations: His personal computer in the staff room of the real Yūyami High School. With the help of his occultist classmate back in the real world, Kei Sūki, Sumio stops Kijima and acquires the last password. Before narrowly escaping from the collapsing school with all the other participants, Sumio realizes that Kijima is actually not ǝnígmǝ as the hand pattern is only on the front of his hand, not on both sides of his hand as Sūki recalls. He also acquires an additional password from Kijima for all eight to escape. Having passed the e-test, the eight participants are sent to ǝnígmǝ's isolated jail cell at the Yūyami Prison, where he is revealed to be wrongly incarcerated for hijacking the tragic flight from over two years ago. Sumio and Shigeru are in shock as they find their old friend from middle school, Kirio Imizuka, locked inside, taking on the identity of ǝnígmǝ all along. Kirio reveals ǝnígmǝ's true form: a human skull in the shape of the familiar symbol. He explains that he acquired ǝnígmǝ from his father, who claimed it can grant him wishes. However, upon possessing ǝnígmǝ, Kirio's destiny and life had went mad, attracting a yet to be revealed "enemy" chasing after him to steal it away. With this, Kirio reveals his true intentions: to "escape" and seek "revenge on the culprit... for everything". He reveals that in order to do this, he set up the e-tests to look for those who were strong enough with the fear and the desire to stay alive, even in life-threatening situations. With the seven participants qualified for passing the e-test, he reveals the next step in his revenge: The eight shall return to their normal lives, but one of the seven participants shall carry and become ǝnígmǝ for the time being to act as a decoy from the "enemy". Kirio also plans to allow himself to possess ǝnígmǝ again later for it to grant more wishes for him beyond a three-wish limit per time of possession. Sumio volunteers, however, contrary to Kirio's intentions, Sumio seeks to destroy ǝnígmǝ to stop the real trouble affecting everyone, the "enemy". Kirio sends the eight participants back to the real world, for everyone to realize all the wishes coming true. Upon returning home, Mina reveals to Sumio that she'd actually been warped back home all along and that his father had given her the instruction to send Sūki a phone to contact Sumio. Kijima spots the "enemy", eating a doll and leaving behind a garbage bag with something inside. Meanwhile, Sumio makes his first wish to ǝnígmǝ: to destroy itself and disappear from the world. A few days later, Sumio wakes up from a nightmare telling him to board a 12:04 train to Gaikotsu Island. He gets a text message from Kijima, telling him to go to the Yūyami Hospital. There, he reunites with the other seven participants, where he shows everyone his findings in the garbage bag: a human without bones. They realize "Cannibal" is after the humans who have received Talents to devour them, as well as the skull, which is also causing everyone's misfortunes by warping people's destinies. Later that day, at Yūyami Station, Sumio gets a call from his father telling him to board the 12:04 train. Suddenly, Shigeru gets a prediction of the city becoming deserted and disappears through a shadow in the wall, just like how Mina disappeared earlier. The 12:04 train pulls into the station, causing everyone but Sumio to disappear from the station. Sumio boards the train to find inside fellow e-test participant Matsurigi and three uncooperative participants, Mao Nanafushi, Tsutomu Akame and a disguised gentleman with a safe over his head. The five of them are subjected to a competition to get to Gaikotsu Island, the end of the line. On the way are a set of stations, where paricipants must get a new ticket to re-board the train. However, one participant is to be eliminated at each station as there aren't enough tickets inside to allow all passengers to continue boarding the train. Mao and the disguised gentleman are eliminated after the first two stations and are eaten in the dark by Cannibal. Sumio determines that Akame must be Cannibal, to which Akame plays the part to taunt Sumio and Matsurigi. The next station afterwards is the Yūyami Prison, where the remaining participants must find tickets carried by two prison guards: Kiyoshi Mitarai and chief guard Gōzō Kuroiwa. Akame manages to steal Kiyoshi's ticket, trap Matsurigi and take control of the prison, using a pistol to free the prisoners from their cells. Akame commands the prisoners to capture Sumio with a promise to free everyone afterwards, which he ends up breaking. Sumio manages to find Kuroiwa and his office, looking over someone strapped on an electric chair. Sumio ends up finding not just the ticket, but a master key to all the prison's cells, turning all the prisoners against Akame and stealing his ticket for Matsurigi. Akame flees the prisoners only to confront Kirio on the electric chair, where Kirio switches places with him and escapes, leaving Akame behind to die with Kuroiwa activating the chair. Sumio and Matsurigi re-board the train, where they find many more garbage bags. Sumio realizes the garbage bags are of all his friends. It is here where Cannibal reveals himself, having disguised himself as Matsurigi all along. He nearly manages to capture Sumio and take the skull from him, but Kirio saves him and the two reunite to take on Cannibal. Cannibal reveals himself to be Shimei Kōda, whose stomach is enclosed in glass where all the dolls he had eaten are kept. Meanwhile, everyone eaten by Kōda finds themselves in a strange room with heads missing from all the objects in the room. Eventually, they find a camera with a video revealing Sumio's father, Kōda, their teacher and Kirio arriving at a well, the original members of Yūyami High's occult club, where they attempt to deposit the skull and leave it alone forever. The well tempted the four of them to give a human sacrifice to keep possessing the skull, to which Kirio accidentally pushes Kōda down the well with it. It is at this point that everyone realizes Kōda really wanted the possess the skull to return himself to normal all along. Sumio gives Kōda the skull, and Kōda frees everyone who he trapped inside his stomach. The disguised gentleman reveals himself as Gidō Imizuka, Kirio and Kijima's father as well as Kōda and Sumio's father's teacher. Everyone arrives at Gaikotsu Island Station to find Sumio's father holding Shigeru. Sumio's father reveals that he, Kōda and their teacher had been studying the skull in the past and realized it was too dangerous for human use, but that they accidentally sacrificed Kōda down the well and caused the skull to return. Gidō reveals that it was also Kōda as Cannibal who attached a safe over his head. Arriving at the well, everyone watches Sumio as he deposits the skull down the well to be left there forever. He makes his second wish: to make it disappear from the world without sacrificing anyone. He then makes his third wish and everyone disappears. Sumio wakes up to find everyone back to their normal lives, seemingly having forgotten about ǝnígmǝ altogether. At the end of the day, Sumio meets Kirio, who credits him for escaping destiny, despite the fact that the skull could not be destroyed. Finally, Sumio receives another "Mayday" call from his phone. Characters See also: Characters Main Characters Sumio Haiba :Year 1 Class A. His talent is the dream diary. He refers to the dream diary as a way to help change the current fate and when people are in trouble he refers to it as a MAYDAY. After being taken into the e-test, Sumio becomes the de facto leader of the group, as he appears to have the most training with his talent, and possesses a willingness to help others when they are in danger. It has been since revealed that his actual talent is telepathy, and that talent combined with Shigeru's future-sight, allows him to write the future in his dream diary. Shigeru Kurumiya :Year 1 Class A. Her talent is future-sight. When her talent is combined with Sumio's, the dream diary works. Shigeru is Sumio's childhood friend. Despite this, Sumio, or herself, never knew she had an talent and openly wonders why Shigeru is taking the e-test. Moto Hasekura :Year 1 Class E. His talent is to make things turn invisible/disappear, introduced in chapter 2. He refers to his power as a curse and is the strong desire to get rid of it that Enigma promises to get rid of, however after seeing his talent being useful to the group, seems to have seen his talents in a better light. His motto is that he always takes the safest path in life. Hiina Kujōin :Year 2 Class C. Her talent is an invisible third hand introduced in chapter 4. With the third hand, she can move small objects and often uses the talent to check each room for safety reasons. Despite being invisible, the hand always leaves small hand prints among the surface of what it touches. She was originally a loner and preferred to keep to herself, while using her talent to prevent the other students from playing cruel pranks on her. She seems to be developing feelings for Sumio. Jirō Matsurigi :Year 3 Class B. His talent is Cubic Subtraction, introduced at the end of chapter 8 and explained in chapter 9. With this talent he can reduce the measurements of objects at his will. The only conditions of this talent is that he cannot add to the object and it does not affect humans. He is the first in this e-test to be captured by a shadow. Once he was saved, he had the choice to swallow a pill to stop the shadow transformation. Instead of swallowing the pill, he saves it to force Kurisu Ryo to take it and save him. It is explained that he has already taken place in a past e-test as the sole survivor and wanted to take place in another to save Kurisu Ryo. Aru Mizusawa :Year 2 Class H. When he was captured he was in a costume he was wearing for a part-time job as a police mascot. It's later revealed that his talent allows him to transform in his costume, called Pit-Kun. With his talent, he can also change his size, growing to huge proportions and even fly. He discovered his talent after he was in a tragic accident, leaving his body practically immobile. But after being inspired by the heroics of Pit-Kun, transformed to the character and dedicates to save people. Takemaru Sudō :Year 3 Class G. - His talent allows him to "rewind" things making them return to the past. It is introduced and explained in chapter 26. He is very strong-headed as well as strong. Ryō Kurisu :Year 2 as of two years ago. His talent is Flat, introduced in chapter 11. Flat allows the user to enter a flat world, such as a picture, and interact with the contents of the picture. Ryo is the only one in the world who can interact with the picture. He tricks the party into believing that he is Mizusawa Aru. It is later revealed he was one of the students who failed the e-test, where before his personality mirrored that of Sumio, but as time went by with the group and with only few riddles answered, they started to turn on each other, where in the end he saved Jiro but ended up getting trapped. While there, the shadows corroded his good beliefs with selfish and cruel desires to escape with any means. It wasn't till Jiro gave him the pill did he return to his normal self again. ǝnígmǝ :The antagonist and mysterious controller of the e-test. He is represented by the symbol of a human skull with the jaw in the opposite direction (in a way making a lower case e), but it is later revealed by Matsurigi that Enigma is indeed human with a noticeable mark on his right hand. Setting Reception Category:Enigma